America’s Most Studied Battle: Twenty Years of Systematic Metal Detector Surveys at Pea Ridge National Military Park, Arkansas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Geophysical and Geospatial Research in the National Parks" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pea Ridge National Military Park commemorates the March of 1862 battle that was the most important engagement fought west of the Mississippi River. Since the early 2000s, archaeologists from the National Park Service, Arkansas Archeological Survey, the Arkansas Archeological Society, and the NPS Volunteers in Parks program have studied the battlefield through numerous means, all heavily employing geophysical approaches. Using remote sensing techniques to identify isolated battle-related finds, plan for shovel testing surveys, and to guide open block excavations, we have studied significant portions of the park and made Pea Ridge one of the most thoroughly-studied conflict landscapes in the country. This research has led to refinements in the way the battle is interpreted to the public and has created unique stories about the event lost beneath the dirt long ago. This poster details those impacts and shows how geophysics-led, collaborative projects can be used to great effect.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New and Emerging Geophysical and Geospatial Research in the National Parks   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38275.0